Bāul Music- Electronic Mediation and Media Intervention

Abstract

This essay focuses on the redefinition of local identities in the global music industry through Bāul performers’ assimilation of global discourse and global market forces in their performance practices. Through investigating the relationship between musical changes and globalizing processes, it examines strategies for cultural translation employed by performers to insert their ethnic identity into the global village. This essay reviews the key issues of musical change and cultural translation within traditional Bāul music performance, before addressing the effects of globalization on India. In so doing, it will exhibit how the hegemonic processes of globalization can also empower local musicians by enabling their music to reach a global audience.

Keywords: Bāul Music, Media Intervention, Electronic mediation, Bāul Fusion Music